Finally the warm weather is here! We have been learning so much and consolidating our skills. We hope to see many families here at Dufferin for the Open House tonight. Our classroom will be open to show off our 3-D sculptures and our houses for the Three Little Pigs. You are welcome to take these items home with you after the Open House.

The virtue that we will be practising in May is Consideration. We practise consideration by thinking about other people and their feelings. We can pay attention to what other people like and don’t like, and do things that give them happiness. We are showing consideration when we consider others’ needs as important as our own.

With the warm weather we have a few new things to think about. The children need to remember running shoes for Gym on Day 2 and 3. Flip-flops and high heeled sandals are not recommended for playing in the yard. Each child is allowed to bring a water bottle or personal cup to school to make getting drinks easier. Please make sunscreen a part of your morning routine. The children shouldn’t need to bring sunscreen to school.

We will be sad to say goodbye to Mme Senécal at the end of this week. She has had a very successful teaching block with our class. We are hoping to see her working in one of our immersion schools in September.

Please continue to review the work sent home in the Friday Files each week. Worksheets sent home in the file are yours to keep forever and ever! Please continue to send back items we work on regularly in class.

We are now finished with formal spelling dictations. Please spend some time each week practising the new "Mots de la semaine" words. The children will write them in their agendas usually on Mondays. We will work on reading and spelling these words throughout the week and I will send home a homework sheet on the weekend.

We are reading "Un éléphant ca trompe" as a whole class. The children are doing a good job of tracking the text with their fingers as they read. Please encourage them to do this at home when you read together. We also use our fingers to cover part of the word while focussing on one sound.

We have spent most of April working on the facts to ten. You can easily practise them at home by playing games together with dice. We spent a lot of time working on the concept of part/part/whole for the number facts.

We are currently learning all about money. The children have been collecting pennies from Mme Senécal and changing them for other coins at the "Banque". The children will learn about the value of each of our coins and practise adding various money amounts to 20 cents.

We will go back to problem solving using money next week.

Sorting and classifying objects will be later in May, as well as Probability.

We have finished our unit on Matter and Materials. We are now learning about sources of energy. The sun is our main source of energy. Ask your child if they can explain how they get all their energy during the day!

Etudes du milieu (Social Studies):

In mid-May we will begin a unit on mapping to complete part of our study of The Local Community.

Attached is the Scholastic order for May. If you would like to order any books for your child, please have the order and a cheque to me by Tuesday May 12. The best books for us are the ones at Level 1.

If you ever have any questions, please call me at the school 519-752-8232.

Mme Gorecki

Check your calendars for many fun events at Dufferin in May!

Avril

The year is moving by so quickly! Very soon the weather will be nice and warm and all of our outdoor activities will be starting up again. The children are welcome to bring soft balls (like tennis balls, or nerf) and skipping ropes to school to play with at recess times. Hopefully our fields will be open for the spring if they are not too muddy.

The virtue that we will be practising in April is Forgiveness. We practise forgiveness by giving our friends another chance if they have done something wrong, knowing that everyone makes mistakes. Forgiveness is also having the courage to face a mistake that you have made. You may feel sad, guilty or angry. Let the feelings come and then let them go.

We are in Term 3 now. If you haven’t already done so, please return page three of the report card along with the envelope. We have done some goal setting for Term 3 which is glued to the back of the page 3. Your comments are also welcome.

Later this month, we will have a visit from Quincy Mack. He’s a Brantford boy with a talent for basketball and speaking to kids. You can learn more about his presentation from the school newsletter.

We have Earth Day activities planned for April and I have also signed our class up for the "Pause to Play Challenge" . Sponsored by the Brant County Health Unit, "Pause to Play" is part of an international challenge called... duh, duh, dum.... "Turn Off the TV Week! Look out for more info later this month.

Congratulations to the March certificate winners! For their hard work, self-discipline, and efforts to speak French, BRAVO to Stephanie, Braxton, Nassim, and Spencer.

Please continue to review the work sent home in the Friday Files each week. Worksheets sent home in the file are yours to keep forever and ever! Please continue to send back items we work on regularly in class.

Français We are changing up our Literacy Centres this month. There will be a puppet centre for putting on a play of the Three Little Pigs, and a shared writing centre where the children will write their own version of a book read to us by Mme Senecal.

I’m really pleased with the two reading response activities you’ve been working on at home. Practise makes better readers! You can see the level of the book on the back of the Alpha Jeunes books. Our goal is to have as many children as possible reading the D6 books by the end of May.

Mme Senecal has been working on the concept of fact families with the class by building trains from coloured tiles. We will be continuing with this work, learning about the patterns in the adding and subtracting facts through lots of experiences manipulating the tiles. A very important concept for problem solving is how to know when we have found all the possible answers to the problem.

Later this month we will start working with coins and use our knowledge of adding facts and counting by 5's and10's to count small amounts of change.

This year we kicked off our

Matter and Materials unit by reading the story of the Three Little Pigs. The unit is about identifying the materials that are used to make the objects we use everyday. We have compared chairs made of different materials and discussed how the materials might be chosen depending on the function of the object. The children have made a paper house for the first little pig which we tested for stability with our blow-dryer wolf. We will be building two more houses as we learn about the properties of different materials, as well as strategies for fastening things together. We will be calling on you to raid your blue boxes when the time comes to build our third house.

Our next unit will be exploring sources of energy.

The Arts:

Attached is the Scholastic order for April. If you would like to order any books for your child, please have the order and a cheque to me by Tuesday April 8. The best books for us are the ones at Level 1.

If you ever have any questions, please call me at the school 519-752-8232.

You can also check the school website for information, classroom newsletters and news from our Parent Council: http://schools.gedsb.net/duf/index.htm

Mme Gorecki et Mme Senecal

9. Test Date: April 7

février

This is a month of celebrations. We will watch for the Groundhog on the 2^nd, make pancakes for Mardi gras on the 5^th, make Chinese lanterns on the 7^th, count to 100 on the 12^th and share Valentines on the 14^th. Take a break and enjoy Family Day on the 18^th at home. Please note that because this is a new holiday the school calendar will not be adjusted this year.

Snow? It comes and goes. We would like the children to enjoy their recesses outside as much as possible, even on wet days. Please make sure they have an extra pair of socks and maybe even pants tucked in their bags.

The virtue that we will be practising in February is Loyalty. We show loyalty when we stand up for what we believe in. We stick up for our friends and family when others act unjustly. When you are loyal you are worthy of trust.

Here’s a cool website to check out: http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal. There is a voice (male or female, you choose) that reads text that you type in French with a beautiful accent. So when you are practising dictée or reading with your child you can check the pronunciation of those tricky words!

Please continue to review the work sent home in the Friday Files each week. Worksheets sent home in the file are yours to keep forever and ever! Please continue to send back items we work on regularly in class.

This month we will be starting formal dictées. There is a letter attached with the lists for Feb. We will have Dictée every Monday morning.

We have been working very hard on the blended sounds from Jolly Phonique (on, ou, ch...) The children will be tested on them this month. We are also going to get a new folder with 100 words to read as a part of our Hundred Day celebration.

Show and Tell has been going very well. Many of the children are coming prepared with sentences they have written out themselves. Bravo!

We are doing daily Literacy Centres now while I read with a group. Instead of asking "How was school today?" try asking "Which centre were you at today?", you may get more information!

We are working on Data Management to start the month of February. We have been creating concrete (real) graphs to answer a question in the classroom and then transferring the data to a bar graph. We will be sorting objects and representing the results on a graph and also practising counting by two’s, five’s and tens around Valentine’s Day. Then to the end of February we will begin learning to tell time to the hour and half hour. The students need to be able to read the analogue clock (round with hands) as well as a digital clock. We will create a book by putting the events of our school day in order.

We are starting a unit on the Five Senses this month. It combines expectations from the Matter and Materials and Life Systems strands.

There are experiences and some experiments to get to know each of the five senses. The children will be learning to express their observations using the senses and also exploring what life would be like if they didn’t have the use of one of their senses.

Mme Howey has asked me to let you know that the children will be doing gymnastics in February. They will be working in bare feet for safety. No dresses, skirts or stockings on Days 2 and 3 please.

Art: Our art activities this month will focus on the Valentine’s Day theme using a variety of materials. We will explore textures in our environment by creating rubbings. Later this month I hope to take a walk to see the horizon line and then create an art work showing what we saw as we looked at the horizon over the Grand River.

If you ever have any questions, please call me at the school 519-752-8232.

You can also check the school website for information, classroom newsletters and news from our Parent Council: http://schools.gedsb.net/duf/index.htm

I wonder if the groundhog will see his shadow?

Mme Gorecki

We had such a great day of skating in December! The children all worked on their skills and had a good experience. I’m especially proud of the progress made by our beginning skaters in just one hour. I hope you have had a chance to visit the rink over the holidays. Our next skating day is way off on April 2. I will send another reminder then.

We have enjoyed our visits with Mme Diamond and Kelso. There will be two more classes in January. The children know many of the choices off by heart. The next step is to be using them in our day to day interactions with others. One skill I’m trying hard to reinforce in the classroom is determining when it’s a small problem or a big problem. You can support this too by asking your child when they come to report on their siblings, then help them to decide on an appropriate Kelso’s choice to use to solve it themselves.

The Virtue our school has chosen to model and practice for the month of January is Justice. Practising justice is being fair in everything you do. It means seeing with your own eyes and not judging by what someone else has told you. When justice is practised, everyone has a fair chance to be seen for who they are.

Félicitations to December’s certificate winners. For their hard work, tolerance, compassion and efforts to speak French, BRAVO to Trinity, Josef, Spencer, et Nate,

Please continue to review the work sent home in the Friday Files each week. Worksheets sent home in the file are yours to keep forever and ever! Please continue to send back items we work on regularly in class.

We have been involved in Literacy Centres since December. I have divided the class into small groups based on the results of our individual reading testing. The groups are involved in a variety of literacy activities while one group reads a book at their level with me.

Later this week, I will be sending home new lists of sight words for the children to practise reading. They are doing very well on the words we have practised so far.

A big focus for the month of January is to make sure we all know the blended sounds from Jolly Phonics. I will be testing the children on all of the sounds with two letters (ou, en, ch, oi, etc.).

We will start the month with a bit of adding, in order to get back into routines and working quietly at our seats. Next we will start a unit of 3D geometry, learning the names and properties of the three dimensional shapes. There will be centres in which we explore the properties such as rolling and sliding shapes and we will also build castles with the solids. Towards the end of the month we will begin learning to tell time to the hour and half hour. The students need to be able to read the analogue clock (round with hands) as well as a digital clock. We will create a book by putting the events of our school day in order.

In January we will continue our unit on community helpers, learning the names of the occupations of people who help us and who help their community. We will be learning the various tools, vehicles and clothing that are used in these occupations.

Science:

After our study of important people in the community we will be switching gears and becoming scientists again! We will be studying the five senses. There are classroom experiments to discover each of the senses and then we will focus on how each of our senses helps us in our daily lives.

Drama: This term the children will be having Drama with Mlle Macoretta on Day 1 at 2:30. They will be receive a mark for Drama on the Term 2 report card.

Attached is the Scholastic order for January. If you would like to order any books for your child, please have the order and a cheque to me by January 14. The best books for us are the ones at Level 1.

If you ever have any questions, please call me at the school 519-752-8232.

You can also check the school website for information, classroom newsletters and news from our Parent Council: http://schools.gedsb.net/duf/index.htm

Enjoy the month of January!

Mme Gorecki

Happy Holidays!

Open house: Dufferin will be having a Seasonal Celebration Open House on Thursday Dec. 2. The Grade 1's will be displaying some of our seasonal crafts in the classroom that night. You are also welcome to tour the other classrooms and see their displays. The choir will be performing and Mme Howey is presenting dances in the gym.

Français: We have almost completed all the sounds in our Jolly Phonique program but still need lots of review. The cahiers will continue to be used as personal dictionaries where the children can record words they need for their writing. We will be having have listening tests on the sounds and I will also continue to test sight words regularly. We practise good reading skills such as tracking the text with a finger, looking at the pictures for clues, looking at the first sounds and blending. In writing we have worked very hard this week on letters to Santa and also on the story to accompany our crazy animals. Through December we will focus on sequencing stories. We will identify the beginning, middle and end of a story, put pictures in sequence and write about stories we’ve read. You could practise sequencing at home by retelling a story after you’ve read it together.

goreckca@fc.gedsb.net

November brings with it another new experience for our Grade One families... Report cards! Report cards will be coming home on Monday December 3. Conferences to discuss first term achievement will be held on the evening of Thursday December 6^th and the morning of Friday December 7^th. Please look for more information in the coming weeks.

The Virtue our school has chosen to model and practice for the month of November is Tolerance. As part of the theme of Peace this month we will be talking about respecting differences. We will be teaching, modelling, and supporting Tolerance in the classroom, on the playground, among friends and peers, and especially among students and children who may not be very close friends.

We will have a special visitor on Monday Nov. 12 and on the four Mondays following. Amy Diamond will be bringing us the Kelso’s Choices program. Kelso teaches the children positive ways to respond to the small problems that come up among friends and how to know when it’s a big problem requiring an adult’s help. This also ties in very nicely with this month’s theme of Tolerance: we may not choose to be very good friends with someone, but we do have a responsibility to respect and accept them as a person distinct from ourselves.

This month we will also be sharing with our students, in an age appropriate manner, the reasons for which we celebrate Remembrance Day, and the need for continued efforts for peace. Our Remembrance Day assembly will take place on Friday, Nov. 9 at 11:15 am. Parents are welcome to mark Remembrance Day with us in the gym.

We are looking forward to our Halloween celebrations on Wednesday. The children will change into their costumes at 1:30. There will be a costume parade around the school and, weather permitting, around the block as well. Thank you ahead of time to those families who have offered to send in goodies for our little party after the parade.

Félicitations to this month’s certificate winners: Jackson, Georgia, and Haylee.

Please continue to review the work sent home in the Friday Files each week. Worksheets sent home in the file are yours to keep forever and ever! Please continue to send back items we work on regularly in class.

We are about to complete our review of the Jolly Phonique program. We have entered the more difficult portion of the program that includes blended and nasal sounds not heard in the English language. Through the month of October we performed an individual reading assessment with each student and will be using this information to create guided reading groups in which students will be engaged in literacy activities while the teachers work with a small group of students at similar reading levels in order to address their specific needs. We have been doing lots of writing using word charts and Autumn and Halloween vocabulary. In November we will get back to regular journal writing. Our focus is on using a variety of sentence starters, using capitals and periods, as well as wrapping text appropriately at the end of the line. November will bring opportunities for small oral presentations in front of the class as we discuss what Peace means to us, as well as create Wacky Animals in science (more information on this to follow...)

In the month of October we completed our unit on Measurement. We practiced using non standard units of measure to compare the relative sizes of classroom objects, and ourselves! We became familiar with the language of measurement, which we continue to hear the students use in the classroom. We also measured each student to track how much they grow throughout the year! We began our work in Geometry with 2D shapes by identifying the characteristics of the four basic shapes. We will continue our Geometry work in November by using attributes of the shapes as a means of sorting and comparing the shapes. We will also be looking at non-traditional examples of shapes in order to practice classification and identification of shapes. Later in the month, we will begin our work on Patterning by looking at patterns in simple series, as well as creating patterns with pictures, sounds, numbers, and words. Please note that work completed after our Geometry unit will be assessed for inclusion on Term 2 Report Cards.

We will be having a visit on Friday Nov. 16 from the Mad Science program. Scientists will be visiting each class (Gr.1-8) with an experiment and activities related to our curriculum. There is a small cost for this program, $3 per student. Please send it in as soon as possible.

We began our scientific studies in October by sorting and classifying living beings from non-living objects. We have been discussing the needs common to all living things. In November we will be studying the various body parts and habitats of animals. We will be using this information to invent and build our own creatures. Students will be writing sentences describing the type and number of body parts they have given their invented creature. This is always a very popular project. The students produce some amazing work which we like to have on display for our parents to see during our family / teacher interviews.

Most of our work this month will reflect work we will be doing for our Science project. This project addresses the expectation or creating and following a plan to create a 3D work of art. We will need to use Art periods as well as Science classes in order to complete this project on time. We will take some time also to learn our primary and secondary colours. We will discuss how the value and shade of a colour can be manipulated to show emotion as we create our class offering for the Remembrance Day assembly.

The order form for November will be sent home in the Friday File on November 2nd. For Grade 1 I recommend books that are Level 1 or 2. If you choose to place an order, please return the completed order form with cheque payable to Scholastic by Monday November 12^th. Merci!

Mme Gorecki

It is hard to believe that the first month of school has already come and gone! September has been a very busy and enjoyable month. The students are settling into our classroom routines and have made the transition to full time school with success. Meet the Teacher night (with pizza!) was a great success. Thank you to all those who were able to come and support your child and our school.

October is going to be a very busy month, with pizza day, fundraising, Thanksgiving, Hallowe’en and lots of birthdays! Please keep and refer to your calendar for all of our important dates.

In October we will be learning and practising the virtue of Thankfulness, "la Gratitude". Being thankful is appreciating the things you have and the people you care about. Without thankfulness people can become negative, complaining when they don’t have everything their own way. This month we will use our Tribes activities to talk about people and things we are thankful for in our lives.

Félicitations to September’s certificate winners! Bravo to Stephanie, Dysan, Braxton and Nassim for consistently demonstrating respect!

Keep up the good work Grade One!

Curriculum

Math

We have a test next week on number recognition up to 20. It would be a good idea to make a set of flashcards you could use to practice with your child at home. Have them teach you to count in French. We will continue learning the numbers up to 40; I will again test the students by the end of the month. Next week, we will begin a unit on measurement. The students are using non standard units of measure to measure familiar objects. We will be using comparative language in order to make statements about the size of various objects in our class. Later in the month, we will begin our geometry unit with a study of 2D objects shapes and their properties.

We are just about to complete our first unit in Social Studies based on Relationships, Rules, and Responsibilities. We have identified important people in our lives at home and at school, as well as the roles those people represent. We have identified the rules of the school and of our classrooms, and the reasons for which those rules are in place. Next week, the students are bringing home booklets they have made full of wonderful pictures and words about their families; please look at these with your child and have them explain their work to you.

We are required to report on each of the Arts strands only once in the year but I will be reporting Visual Arts each term. This term your children are having Health (not an Art) with Mlle Rohan on Day 1's while I teach music to Mlle Macoretta’s class. They will have Drama in Term 2 with Mlle Macoretta and then I will teach Music in Term 3. We will still be doing lots of singing together as a language activity throughout the year.

Thank you to the parents who have filled out our volunteer forms, and gotten police checks updated at Meet the Teacher night. We have a trip planned to the Children’s Safety Village in November and we’ll need more parents’ help to be able to go. Please send a note if you would like me to send home one of the Volunteer packages. I’d also love to have a couple of regular classroom volunteers to work with children or help with craft preparation. If you have a morning or afternoon available we’d be happy to have you in the class!

We are having our Halloween party and costume parade after the second nutrition break at 1:30 on Halloween. Please let me know if you would like to send a packaged, nut-free treat for the class. We could use juice, cello carrots, dip, chips or crackers. No candy please. We will also be decorating a special Halloween cookie - shh, more word on that later.

Bienvenue/welcome to Grade 1!This is going to be a great year with three Grade 1 classes. Mlle Macoretta, Mlle Rohan, and I have already been planning lots of new activities together.

Our annual Meet the Teacher BBQ, organized by School Council volunteers, is on Thursday, September 20. Please bring the whole family for pizzar, to meet your teachers and to see our new classroom.

The Grade 1's spend most of their time in our classroom with me however, we have several other teachers who help us as well. Mme Howey teaches Gym on Days 2 & 3. Mme Martisius will be taking the class to the library for computers on Day 1 and book exchange on Day 5. Mlle Macoretta will take our class for Drama on Day 1. Don’t worry, a timetable and a calendar for September are attached. Gym with Mme Howey will be taught in English and the rest of our time is spent in French.

Agendas: Our routine is working very well already. We write a message every day which you can look at with your child. Please check the pocket and the page each day for notes and work coming home. I check each morning for notes from home.

Français - We have begun the year with a review of the alphabet letters and sounds using Jolly Phonics. We have a monthly poem that we read together every day. I will be asking each child to read one on one with me this month in order to establish

a starting point and then we will begin daily reading groups and literacy centers. The children will be bringing home a library book in French. If you aren’t comfortable reading the book aloud, just look at the pictures

together and try to find corresponding words in the text. Please continue to READ, READ, READ in English. Our writing program will begin with printing in our Jolly Phonics cahier and daily journals.

Les maths - We have begun with counting and number recognition. I am asking each child to count as high as they can in French. We will focus on the numbers to 20 for September. Later this month, we will work on linear measurement, using non-standard units (such as a pencil) to measure short distances.

Étude du milieu (Social Studies) - Our first unit, Relationships, Rules and Responsibilities, will focus on the family, important people in our lives and important people in Canada. We are making a booklet about ourselves and our families, and identifying rules at home, school and in the community.

Art visuel - Please send in a cardboard egg carton, if you have one, for a project next week.

A Scholastic book order is attached. Please return it by Monday, Sept. 17, if you are ordering this month. Look at the books that are "Niveau 1" (level 1) these are the easiest and will be most beneficial for your child. It’s a great idea to build a small library of French books for your child to read at home!

If you have any questions or concerns, there are many ways to reach me. Call the school 752-8232, e-mail me at goreckca@fc.gedsb.net or send a note for me to call you in the evening.

See you on the 20th!

Mme C. Gorecki